Time and time again
life will prove to you how fragile and rare is Trust,
and how valuable when found.

It will prove to you
that many people will disappoint you
and hurt you;
and how important it is to hold on to those that don’t;
how important it is to hold on
to those who can taste your tears through the kisses,
and then kiss them away.

It will reveal to you
that there is nowhere to go to escape from heartache,
that it will hurt deeper and stronger each time;
even though, each time,
you thought you had mastered the pain.
But pain is not meant to be mastered
— it is meant to conquer ‘you’,— it is meant to reveal you.

Life will manifest to you
that heartbreak is a lesson we must learn,
and that its only teachers are those we have loved.

It will show you
that sometimes
it takes a smack in the face with a boulder
to finally see things as they truly are;
and we realize we can lie to ourselves for only so long.

Life will prove to you
that sadness is only one of two wings;
and that we need both wings to fly.

Last night I was thinking to myself that sometimes, there really is no one to talk to; no one who could possibly understand… and even God is strangely silent.

As I was driving to work this morning.. I was struck by the beauty of the world surrounding me. There was an explosion of color all around; reds, oranges, yellows… this really is a beautiful time of year. There was a gentle breeze that would carry the leaves into sometimes a waltz, other times a whirling dervish-like kind of dance, and then they would gently fall to the ground. It was truly a silent symphony nature was conducting right in front of me.

But before I could reach the end of my smile, I was hit with a stark realization: the beauty that I was witnessing… was death. Those leaves were dying. And it was beautiful. And as I drive that way to my job every day, God willing, I will witness the continuation of this death, and then the coming back to life. And the trees will be bigger and lusher and more abundant in the spring.

Reminders. Right in front of my eyes.

My thoughts then took me on a journey:

There is death.. and there is re-birth.

There is pain.. and there is joy. My pain may be someone else’s joy.

There is loss.. and there is gain. My loss may be someone else’s gain.

Who am I to always want to have the joy and the gain all the time?

There are times when we feel we’ve lost the love of our lives.. but then we meet someone who makes us realize that we never even knew what love really was.

We may lose something that we think can never be replaced.. but then we gain something monumentally better.

Reminders.

Showing me that it is only through the combination of joy and pain that we can truly know anything about ourselves and our destiny; that it is the only way to learn what we should avoid and what we need to do to grow. That we must indeed accept disappointment while realizing that it is finite. But there is infinite hope. That “Sadness is but a wall between two gardens” (Kahlil Gibran). Does that mean that we shouldn’t be sad or feel pain? No. It means we should see it and accept it for what it is. Another blessing from our Creator.